Metroid: Other MReview

A few short years ago, Retro Studios wrapped up its GameCube and Nintendo Wii Metroid Prime trilogy, a three-part adventure that led up to the original NES classic. But there's far more to be told about this intergalactic bounty hunter, and Metroid: Other M is the official continuation of the Metroid series that continues the story that wrapped in 1994 with Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. After experiencing the game from start to finish multiple times, I walk away from Metroid: Other M with the feeling that it was greenlit to flesh out Samus as a character more than it was created to advance the classic Metroid gameplay. Its focus on story and action makes Metroid: Other M one hell of a ride and a wholly recommended experience: it's an emotional tale and a fun adventure wrapped up in a surprisingly ambitious package.

This Wii sequel, developed in collaboration between Nintendo and Tecmo's Team Ninja (best known for its work on Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series), is sort of a hybrid of a retro remake and a contemporary sequel: classic and familiar gameplay elements repurposed in a current generation experience. Metroid: Other M has been designed to utilize the Wii remote exclusively as its only way to play. This, along with a return to the third-person scrolling camera -- brings back the feeling of the old-school Metroid experience, and ultimately Nintendo and Team Ninja succeed in that effort.

Metroid: Other M is not a retro throwback in the same way New Super Mario Bros. Wii is. With a few exceptions, Nintendo's Mario remake could have been done on a previous Nintendo console. But not so with Metroid: Other M. The feeling of the old-school design is here, but it's been developed with current generation standards in mind--dynamic 3D camera, first person perspective, and an incredible focus on cinema-style storytelling. Its straightforward controls certainly have been made to build the design to be more accessible than, say, the first-person shooter style that Retro devised for the Metroid Prime franchise, but don't mistake this approach to be anything less than a hardcore gamer's experience.

The game starts out, almost literally, with a massive bang: the opening scene is an amazing recreation of the climax of Super Metroid, with Samus battling with Mother Brain and the baby Metroid sacrificing itself to save the bounty hunter – and help her defeat the massive beast. While this is fantastic fan service for anyone who's played through Super Metroid, this elaborate sequence is also meant to introduce Samus to an audience that might not understand just how independent and bad-ass this intergalactic bounty hunter truly is. It also shows just how story focused Metroid: Other M will be when the game actually starts.

Incredible attention went into building up the Other M story, and it's really the first time that Nintendo's produced a game on such an epic scale. Samus, a character who's been in Nintendo's arsenal since pretty much the company's videogame beginning, gets a voice for the first time. In the past, Nintendo's been hesitant in establishing a voice for its franchise characters beyond basic sound bites, but here, Samus is a full, fleshed out character with personality and emotion, and is someone you can connect with almost from the first line she speaks.

You'll go into first-person mode a lot using a clever pointer control.

Metroid: Other M revolves around a mysterious distress call aboard a space station called the "Bottle Ship." When Samus whisks off to investigate, she's met with familiar faces: soldiers of the Galactic Federation. Without getting too deep and run the risk of spoiling the story, Metroid: Other M spends a lot of time delving into Samus's past and exploring her relationship with Adam Malkovich, the commanding officer who's taken charge on the Bottle Ship.

It's fantastic to see Nintendo finally embrace contemporary storytelling with motion-captured acting and voice-over. Even when the script falls on heavy-handed, symbolism-focused Japanese-style storytelling that can -- and does -- border on the absurd, it's hard not to get sucked into Samus' life and feel her emotions throughout the ten-plus hour adventure.

While a good portion of those ten hours will be spent watching cutscenes, it's still a small fraction compared to the amount of gameplay in Metroid: Other M. As much attention as Nintendo and Team Ninja put into the cinematic experience, it's still a videogame and needs to fall back upon the core gameplay and ultimate question: is it fun? The answer to that is a big fat "yes!" with a nagging "but..."